JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The impact of the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) is being felt across the world, and yet we still know little about its full impact. One of the most serious gaps in our current knowledge concerns infection’s long-term mental and physical impact of the infection on affected individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the Netherlands in the end of February 2020, resulting in almost 50,000 people testing positive for the virus, 11,850 hospitalizations, and over 6,000 deaths by the end of June1. Although many patients recover from the acute phase of the disease, experience with other viruses raises serious concerns regarding possible late sequelae of the infection.

Objective:

A group of experts (members of a patient-oriented pressure group, pulmonologists, scientists, IT-experts) recognized the need for a reliable tool to assess the long-term impact of COVID-19 infection on individual patients.

Methods:

Here, we describe the process of the development, assessment, programming, implementation and usage of this new tool; Assessment of Burden of COVID-19 (ABCoV).

Results:

By July 2020, the new ABCoV-tool has been incorporated into an online patient platform, servicing over 1,300 patients, and which is being used in four hospitals for monitoring post-COVID-19 for research purposes and in regular care.

Conclusions:

This new ABCoV-tool can provide insight into the perceived burden of disease, provide direction in the personalized aftercare for people with post-COVID-19, and may enable us to be prepared for possible future recurrences.